


All This And More

by Anonymous



Series: Within/Without [12]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: 3x11 insert, 3x12 insert, Family Feels, M/M, alternating pov, buck tries to be woke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:21:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24356494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The temptation to kiss Eddie was like the old temptation to stick his tongue to a pole during an icy Pennsylvania winter. He knew he shouldn’t do it, he knew the consequences would be immediate and painful. And yet. And yet.Buck and Eddie respond to new developments in their friends’ lives and try to understand what it all means for their own family—if that’s what they are.(inserts for 3x11 and 3x12)
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV), Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Series: Within/Without [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1738876
Comments: 27
Kudos: 414
Collections: Anonymous





	All This And More

**Author's Note:**

> Some nasty language, but it has a context.

“Uh, what is this?” Eddie said, as Hen handed them each a sheet of paper.

“‘Talking Points Regarding Henrietta and Karen,’” Bobby read.

“Social services is vetting Karen and me to become foster parents,” Hen explained, passing out copies to Buck and Chim. “I listed each and every one of you as references, so when they call, I need you to sing our praises.”

Eddie glanced over the sheet and raised an eyebrow at the neatly enumerated list. _Number Twenty-Six: Karen can solve a Rubik’s cube in less than a minute._ “You mean these specific twenty-six praises?”

“Karen made the list. She’s very thorough,” Hen replied.

“Hen, we know you,” Bobby said. “We don’t need some piece of paper to remind us of your many wonderful qualities.”

“I appreciate that, Cap,” Hen said, “but I’d rather you didn’t improvise. The stakes are very high, and—”

“I didn’t know you played a musical instrument,” Buck interrupted.

“Mm-hm. Bassoon. First chair. And I was damn good. Memorize, people.”

“What’s a bassoon?” Buck said.

*

As far as Buck was concerned, the upshot of last year’s LSD accident had definitely been the revelation of rooftop access at Station 118. Obviously it was horrible that Cap had followed a hallucination of his daughter Brooke all the way up to the roof—and might have followed her right over the edge if Athena hadn’t intervened—but Buck had still filed the knowledge away for future usage. A few months later, he and Eddie had taken advantage of a slow shift to haul a couple chairs up there and just chill out away from the hustle and bustle downstairs. They hadn’t exactly cleared it with Bobby—but they could still hear the bell, so what was the harm, really?

They were up there now, stretched out on their towels, shirts off, basking in the afternoon sun as Anderson .Paak played softly from Buck’s phone. Eddie lay on his back, arms folded behind his head, eyes hidden behind his sunglasses. Buck was sitting up to apply more sunscreen; he burnt easily, though he was always after telling Eddie that skin cancer didn’t, like, discriminate.

“The bassoon is one weird-looking instrument,” he commented, squinting at the google image Siri had found for him. “It says here it’s the principal bass instrument of the woodwind family, and it’s exceptionally difficult to play because the placing of the finger holes is scientifically irrational. Kind of a weird choice for Hen, huh? She doesn’t usually go for the scientifically irrational.”

“Maybe that was part of the appeal,” Eddie said.

Buck peered at him from the corner of his eye. As long as he faced forward and kept his sunglasses on, he could shamelessly ogle Eddie without Eddie being any the wiser. He definitely still had the compulsion to check Eddie over for suspicious bruises every chance he got, but Eddie’s body betrayed no evidence that he’d returned to street fighting. And Buck _knew_ he hadn’t, he just felt obliged to make certain.

Also, Eddie was looking exceptionally fine these days. Difficult _not_ to appreciate all that skin he had on display right now, the geometric precision of his abs, his pecs pulling taut as he extended his arms in a lazy stretch.

“Put the phone away, won’t you?” he said, swatting at Buck’s shoulder.

Buck did, reluctantly. He rubbed the last of the sunscreen into his chest and flopped down beside Eddie again. “I’m just nervous,” he said. “Hen said they’d probably call me today, and I don’t wanna screw it up for her.”

“You won’t,” Eddie said comfortably.

“Easy for you to say. You _have_ a kid, you knew all the right stuff to tell them.”

“I was on the phone with social services for like five minutes, Buck. Super basic questions—are Hen and Karen responsible, would I trust them with my son, that kind of thing. No bassoons, no Rubik’s cubes. Simple.”

“Did they…” Buck watched a jet pass by overhead. “Did they bring up the lesbian thing at all?”

“Uh, no, I don’t think so. It was more like, did I think Hen and Karen could provide a balanced home environment for a new kid.” 

“You don’t think that was a trick question? ‘Balanced home environment?’”

“I didn’t at the time.” Eddie propped himself up on an elbow. “D’you think it was?”

Buck shrugged.

“Well, I said they could. Provide a balanced home environment.” Eddie pushed his sunglasses up on his head. “Clearly that was the right answer—or d’you think I should’ve said something like ‘two moms are better than one?’ Damn it, Buck, you’re making me second guess the whole thing now.”

Buck rolled onto his side to face him, head pillowed on his arm. “I’m sure you were great, Eds. I’m worried about _me,_ ’cause you know I say dumb shit when I’m on the spot. I’ve been doing some research—”

Eddie groaned.

“I’m not trying to—I mean like I have a lot to learn, about everything, and I thought I should be prepared. Know stuff in theory. I’m reading a bunch of thinkpieces so I’ll know the right words if they ask. Queerness and, and, um, Stonewall… why are you laughing?”

“I don’t think the case worker is gonna ask you about Stonewall,” Eddie chuckled. 

“Well, they _might_ ,” Buck insisted, “and now I know what it is. But that’s not enough to make me a good ally, so I went down this internet rabbit hole about like emotional labor, and how much work Hen probably has to do just to exist in a space with us, a-a-a space that’s primarily male and heterosexual and sort of like based in white supremacy?”

“Uh,” Eddie said.

“So I just wanna be prepared to acknowledge all that when CPS calls, without like being weird about it. _Am_ I being totally weird about it?” he demanded, pushing up his own sunglasses so he could get a better read on Eddie’s expression.

Eddie still looked amused, but he had a thoughtful furrow between his brows that meant he was selecting his words with care. “I think… you’re a good friend. And I think you’re overthinking it. All you have to do is communicate that Hen and Karen are good people, good parents. You don’t have to wrap it up in all that jargon.”

“I guess.” He wasn’t entirely convinced, but Eddie’s proximity was starting to do funny things to his senses. Eddie’s skin radiated heat; he could feel it, warmer than the sun. And he could smell the musk of Eddie’s cologne under the chemical tang of his own sunscreen. They were so close he could see the tiny lines around Eddie’s eyes, laugh lines, because even though Eddie still frowned plenty, his smiles came a lot easier these days.

The temptation to kiss Eddie was like the old temptation to stick his tongue to a pole during an icy Pennsylvania winter. He knew he shouldn’t do it, he knew the consequences would be immediate and painful. And yet. And yet. The temptation lingered, a morbid curiosity, an itch in his mind that required all his self-preservation to keep from scratching. 

A loud, blaring ringtone interrupted Anderson .Paak’s easy grooves, and Buck was jolted out of a reverie increasingly focused on Eddie’s lips. “Unknown number, it must be them!” he yelped. “Shit, Eddie, I’m not ready—I don’t even have it here with me, the list of facts—! Help me, fuck, there’s the bassoon and the cube and what else?”

“Just answer the phone, man.” Eddie rolled his eyes. “You’ll do fine.”

“You totally suck, dude.” Buck accepted the call just before it went to voicemail. “Hello?”

“Am I speaking to Mr. Evan Buckley?” A polished, professional woman’s voice.

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Mr. Buckley, my name is Geraldine Fletcher, and I’m a caseworker with the Los Angeles Children’s Services. Henrietta and Karen Wilson listed you as a reference in their application to become foster parents, and I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“Sure, go ahead.” _It’s them_ , he mouthed frantically to Eddie. _Help me._

Eddie, the bastard, just slipped his sunglasses on and stretched out again.

“Mr. Buckley, can you tell me how long you’ve been acquainted with Henrietta and Karen?”

“I’ve known Hen—uh, Henrietta—personally and professionally for about three years now. We’re on a team together at Station 118 of the LAFD. She’s a colleague and also a really good friend. I’ve known Karen almost as long.”

“How would you describe Henrietta’s qualities as a firefighter and paramedic?” the caseworker asked.

Buck ran his fingers through his hair and cleared his throat. “She’s kind. She’s caring, and she’s loyal to her family. She always keeps her cool, even when she’s dealing with a huge emergency, and she never gives up. I’ve seen her administer CPR nonstop for almost twenty minutes to keep a patient alive long enough to get her to surgery.”

“In your opinion, how does Henrietta balance parenthood with such a demanding job?”

“She’s pretty amazing at it. After the earthquake last year, we were called out to this hotel that had collapsed and Cap gave us a choice about going in ’cause one good aftershock could’ve brought the whole thing down on our heads. And, like, it’s easy for someone like me to take that risk, but for somebody with kids? Hen could’ve taken a pass because of Denny, but she didn’t, and she said something like, ‘I’d hope if someone whose job it was to save him had the chance, they’d do it too, no matter what.’ That really stuck with me.”

He paused for breath and looked over at Eddie.

Eddie gave him a thumbs up.

“Hen’s an awesome parent and a kickass, sorry, _great_ paramedic. And that’s on top of all the emotional labor she has to perform as the only black lesbian at the firehouse.”

“Could you… elaborate on that for me?” the caseworker said.

Eddie was gesturing at him: _abort, abort._

Fuck. He could feel the sweat trickling down his temples, so he found his t-shirt and mopped his face with it. “I, uh, I guess I just mean Hen’s probably had to work twice as hard as everybody else to get where she is. And I really admire her for not giving up, for showing her kid you can do anything you set your mind to. And for teaching me about intersectional feminism.”

_What the fuck?_ Eddie mouthed at him.

*

“Sorry I’m late.” Buck maneuvered himself through the doorway, arms laden down with supplies. “The line at Home Depot was crazy. Got all the equipment, though. The pipes are ready to go, the guy at the store measured them out for me.”

“You’re a miracle, you know that?” Eddie pulled him into a brief hug. “I could kiss you right now.” He immediately regretted his choice of words and tried to mitigate the damage. “C’mon in, man. I really can’t thank you enough.”

“It’s—it’s nothing,” Buck said; he looked slightly bashful and there was a pinkish tinge to his cheeks. “Where d’you wanna do this?”

“We can set up in the living room.” Eddie took some of the materials and started laying them out. “I still can’t quite visualize how it all goes together. I was always a disaster assembling Ikea furniture.”

“I’ll sketch it out for you,” Buck offered. “There’s no instructions to follow, ’cause it’s based off a bunch of different things I saw online. But the Home Depot guy said it would be secure and perfectly safe, don’t worry.”

“I’m not,” Eddie said honestly. “You know you have my complete trust when it comes to Christopher. And everything else.” He’d been kind of emotional ever since Buck had called last night and outlined his plan—his invention—to get Christopher up on a skateboard. The realization that Buck had likewise been brooding over Christopher’s disappointment and had actually come up with a workable solution… that got Eddie right in the heart. His heart, he liked to think, was a tough little muscle that never broke. But he was starting to wonder if Buck might not just kill him with kindness. He was dangerously susceptible to it.

Buck beamed at him. “That—you know that means a lot, man. And look, here’s the safety harness I picked up, I actually bought it a couple weeks ago from a site that sells adaptive rock-climbing gear, ’cause I thought that might be fun to try with Chris sometime. But anyway, he’ll be strapped in real tight, and the carabiners go through these loops here. Then you run the cables through the carabiners, that’s how it attaches to the frame…”

Buck’s features swam and blurred as his eyes filled with tears. “And how does the…” he cast about for something to say, anything to distract himself. “How does the actual skateboard get attached?”

Kindly, Buck didn’t comment on his tears. “It’ll be fixed to the base, but with more cables, so there’ll be some give and a sense of movement. If he loses his footing, though, the harness will bear all his weight and the skateboard won’t go anywhere. Ready for the bad news?”

“Bad news?” 

“You’n me are gonna have to push him.”

Eddie laughed and discreetly wiped his eyes. “That’s the bad news?”

“Well, you know what Chris is like on the swings,” Buck said. “He’s a tyrant. We’ll be pushing this thing around for hours. Just you wait, you won’t be thanking me later.”

Privately, Eddie doubted that. But he suspected more dumb shit might come out of his mouth if he tried to dispute the point, so he kept quiet and followed Buck’s directions.

The frame came together pretty quickly, and, seeing the skeleton of it, he finally understood what Buck had envisioned. It was kind of brilliant, elegant in its simplicity. “You know how Cap is always asking us what we’d be doing if we weren’t firefighters?” he said. “Well, you’d definitely be an inventor. Or an engineer.”

“Oh, please, you know I can’t do math,” Buck said dismissively as he tightened the screws at the base. “This contraption here? I just poached a bunch of other people’s ideas and mashed ’em together. Take away my internet, and I’m helpless as a baby. And speaking of babies—did you see the photo of Nia that Karen posted on Instagram? She’s pretty damn cute.”

“Super cute,” Eddie agreed, a little distractedly. It bothered him when Buck put himself down like that, swerved away from compliments. He wanted to say something, but he could never come up with the right words in time, not before Buck had changed the subject and gone careening off in another direction.

He always thought before he spoke, Eddie. When he didn’t, he came out with things that were appalling vicious, like _you’re exhausting_ , or appallingly stupid, like _I could kiss you right now._ No sensible median at all. And if he’d gone through the ordeal of properly analyzing and identifying his feelings, the moment had inevitably passed, and he would conclude that there was little point speaking at all. It had earned him a reputation for thoughtfulness, for discretion and restraint, which Eddie thought was largely undeserved. It was just a form of verbal constipation; meanwhile, Buck thrashed around at the other end of the spectrum, the very definition of logorrhea.

“Apparently we did good as their references,” Buck was saying. “Hen called to thank me this morning, and she said the caseworker had been very impressed. What a relief, right? I totally thought I’d ballsed it up when I said the thing about intersectional feminism and mixed up Audre Lorde and bell hooks.”

“You did have me worried for a few minutes,” Eddie conceded. In fact, he’d wanted to pitch himself off the roof of the firehouse when Buck had blundered his way into feminism and something called critical race theory. But Buck had managed to salvage the interview, and he’d spoken pretty movingly about how Hen and Karen were the moms he wished he could’ve had and how they’d taught him a lot about relationships and parenthood. 

“I can’t wait to meet Nia,” Buck said. “Hen thinks she still needs a week or two, ’cause of all the disruption, but she promised it’ll be soon! God, I’m so freakin’ excited.”

Eddie experienced a throb of jealousy. For one irrational moment, he wanted to accuse Buck of cheating on him and Chris. Would Buck be so enthralled by Hen’s new kid that he’d want to spend less time with the Diazes? He told himself that was preposterous. Of course Buck wouldn’t abandon them: the evidence was all around him, in the skateboarding contraption Buck had fucking _invented_ for Christopher.

“I wonder what Chris’ll make of her,” Buck mused. “He’ll probably just wanna play with Denny, though, won’t he? Since Nia’s so little.”

Eddie relaxed.

“Can you hold this in place?” Buck asked. “I’m ready to attach it to the base now.”

Eddie stood up and held the scaffolding steady.

“Maddie called while I was at the store,” Buck said, a screwdriver clamped between his teeth as he fit the poles together. “Josh, you know Josh? He went on a date with some guy he met online, but it was actually a set-up, and he got mugged instead.”

“Shit, that sucks.” Eddie winced. “Is he okay?”

“Apparently they did a number on his face and he’s got some bruised ribs, but Maddie kept him at hers overnight, and she said he was doing sort of okay this morning.”

“Hold on, he was attacked, too? And what d’you mean, ‘they’? There was more than one?”

“The guy had a friend waiting,” Buck said. “They beat the living shit out of him.”

“That’s a helluva lot more than a mugging,” Eddie pointed out. Josh was a sweet dude, and definitely not an aggressive, confrontational type; he probably would have handed over his wallet without making too much fuss, so why had it escalated into a beating?

He said as much to Buck.

“Like I said, it was a set-up.” Buck tested the tension of the crossbar. “Somebody’s sick idea of a joke, I guess.”

“A _joke_?” Eddie echoed, disbelievingly. Something about it bothered him—something beyond the plausibility of his natural concern for Josh. And Buck’s weird reticence wasn’t helping. “Is that what it was?”

“I don’t know. Maddie said Josh didn’t want people to know it was anything more than a mugging. I guess I just told you, but uh, don’t tell anyone else, okay?”

“Wait, so he didn’t report it?” Eddie exclaimed.

“He just wants it to go away, Maddie said.”

“But—”

“But what, Eddie?” Buck sat back on his heels and looked up at him, brows raised.

“You _know_ what, Buck,” Eddie said, a little uncomfortably. He tugged at the hem of his t-shirt.

“It’s up to Josh.” Buck shrugged slightly. “I don’t like it either, but I get why he wouldn’t want to go to the police and have, like, all his coworkers suddenly involved in his personal life. We’re bad enough at the 118; can you imagine having the whole call center up your ass?”

Eddie could sympathize with that. But: “It’s a pretty serious thing, though, what happened to him. Shouldn’t it be, like… investigated? Incidents like that are—well, they’re sort of bigger than the individual victim, aren’t they?” 

“But that’s the whole thing, Josh doesn’t want to _be_ the victim here, he—”

Eddie lost patience. “Buck, the dude got fagbashed!”

“Eddie!” Buck stood up very quickly. “You can’t say shit like that!”

“But you _know_ that’s what happened,” Eddie growled, going toe-to-toe with him and begrudging every single inch Buck had on him, the guy had no right to tower over him like that—

“You need to calm the fuck down,” Buck told him roughly. “What’re you gonna do, find the guys yourself and give ’em a taste of Fight Club?”

“Can’t tell me they wouldn’t deserve it,” he mumbled, but he was starting to deflate. Honestly, he had no idea where that surge of fury had come from. It was none of his goddamn business, just like Buck had said. “I shouldn’t have used that word,” he admitted, staring at the wall over Buck’s left shoulder. “I _don’t_ use it, ever. I was just pissed, and you were acting like you didn’t know _why_.”

“I do know,” Buck said. They each took a half-step back; the moment de-escalated. Buck put his hand on Eddie’s shoulder; his thumb brushed Eddie’s neck, a light pressure against the dip of his clavicle. “Eddie, I do. But you can’t be so hair-trigger or you’re gonna get yourself into trouble, man.”

Eddie nodded, managed a half-smile that was more like grimace, and they turned back to the skateboard.

They finished the project in near silence. Not an angry silence, just a slightly subdued, ruminative one. Eddie continued to feel ashamed. He needed to exert better self-control; what kind of example was he setting for Christopher? He also experienced the ridiculous impulse to apologize to every gay person he’d ever met, starting with Josh and Hen and Karen and going all the way back to the guy who worked at his mom’s hair salon in El Paso. He was such a Neanderthal sometimes, Shannon had always said so.

But he hadn’t altered his opinion: he still thought Josh should report the attack and have it investigated as a hate crime. Athena could help with that, couldn’t she? One time he and Buck had been at the park with Christopher, and they’d noticed a bunch of swastikas scratched into the bark of an oak tree. Buck had mentioned it to Bobby, who’d mentioned it to Athena, who’d pulled security cam footage and caught the gaggle of dumbass teenagers who were responsible for it.

“Eddie,” Buck said, singsong. “Come back to earth, Eddie.”

“Sorry.”

“You should probably head out to get Chris in the next ten minutes,” Buck told him. “Carla and I will meet you at the park with the skateboard.”

“Carla’s coming?”

“Oh yeah, I needed to run the idea by her, too, and she’s gotta be on hand to record Chris’s first ride. For posterity.”

Buck really had thought of everything.

Eddie tried to muster a smile. “Buck,” he said.

“Yeah?”

His chest felt constricted. “Do you ever,” he began, and stopped. It was an absurd thing he was attempting to ask, and he didn’t want Buck to take it the wrong way. He cracked his knuckles. “Do you ever wonder if, uh, people, if they might…” He couldn’t bring himself to finish. He glared at a spot on the wall and lapsed into frustrated muteness. 

“Do I ever wonder what people might be thinking when they see us—the two of us—out with Christopher?” Buck asked.

That was definitely the gist of it.

Eddie nodded slightly.

“It’s—come up,” Buck said, a bit delicately, and Eddie frowned. “Not—not like in a bad way, not like Josh,” Buck went on hastily. “But certain… assumptions… have been made before, I guess. About, um, us. Being Chris’s dads. Together.”

“Oh,” he said. The knot in his chest loosened.

“Does that, like, bother you?” Buck said.

Eddie looked at him and saw that Buck had found his own spot on the wall to stare at.

“No,” he said honestly. “It doesn’t bother me. People have always stared at me and Chris, on account of the CP, the crutches. It only occurred to me now, after you told me about Josh, that they might look at the three of us for… other reasons. But as long as it’s not hostile, and nobody’s insulting my kid, I really couldn’t give a shit, you know?”

“Okay, cool.” Buck laughed a little and glanced at him through his lashes. “And yeah, me neither. No shits given.”

“Okay,” Eddie said. He felt inexplicably… _pleased._ “I should—I should probably pick Chris up from school now.”

Buck sprang into action then, circling him like an overexcited labrador as he gathered his jacket, phone, keys. “Remember it’s a _surprise_! Don’t say anything about skateboarding, or that me and Carla will be there. Just tell him that you’re going for a walk, or—”

“I know how to run interference,” Eddie interrupted, hand on the doorknob.

He looked back at Buck, standing beside his miraculous invention.

_I could kiss you right now._

He felt a bit hot under the collar.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re so fucking welcome,” Buck told him, grinning.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay! They're getting closer and closer. To...? 
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading!


End file.
